Going Back to Portraits

Going Back to Portraits

I’ve been accepting commissioned portrait works before as a sideline job. But usually, for me to complete one (more or less 12″ x 16″ paper size), it takes me from 3 days to 1 week of working on it. I don’t use a pantograph. That tool never seem to like me. lol. So I have to make measurements on the face by using my pencil as a ruler to check the proportion and distance. A sketch takes me a whole day to finish since I want it to look perfectly the same as the picture, shading is not included on the sketch.

And then, when I am confident that my measurements are correct, I will start shading the sketch. I either use colored pencils or charcoal pencil for it. This is a long process of trial and error. A slight mistake on the shading will make the person look different.

So, I challenged myself to make one small and fast portrait drawing today. Because of the time limit. I didn’t have the pleasure of taking time to measure everything (e.g. distance between the two eyes, distance of the of the nose to the eyes..etc.). I just used a 2H pencil for this portrait and a piece of small bathroom tissue and an eraser. The tissue was used to soften some shades in the face area. I prefer using cotton and cotton swabs, but I don’t intend to make it look too refined so a tissue paper will do.

Overall, I am satisfied on how it turned out. But my inner critic is screaming that there is something wrong. I’ll just try to do better next time. ;D

So, there she is. My cute and bubbly niece – Aija! I guess I did something wrong on the forehead part. Hers is larger. lol but she is still cute! 😀

It’s the first thing taught to me by my uncle when I was in 6th grade. He started with just the eyes, nose, ears, and then the face and he taught me proper shading and measurement. So, it’s not something that can be achieved over night. It needs lot of practice. 🙂

Thanks for the award emjayzed! It’ll take a while before I get to post about it though. But thanks! 😀

Lol, it’s not a gift. I can’t find anything else to draw but my cute niece. I do bigger portraits using charcoal pencil or colored pencil as gifts…and it will definitely take me more than 30 minutes to do that for perfection. 😀